Skip to main content

The State is not your Friend

I saw this phrase somewhere recently. It is an interesting phrase. Obviously the state (or King) does provide certain services including protective services. However, it is quite clear that the state is not anyone's friend. It operates in the way in which it operates (partially by the rule of law, partially by direction of the executive and partially in the interests of the people operating it).

The evidence from the mess in Public Family Law is that it acts directly against the interests of both children and wider families when a "friend" would not be expected to act in that way.

It is against this background that the growth in databases needs to be considered. We have a consequentialist argument from Lord Justice Sedley wherein he argues that it is more important to have greater state power with all the potential abuse than have a situation in which one offender escapes the sanction of the state. (see link)

I think it would be interesting to do a study of the judgments and the judges involved that are in the public domain. That is, perhaps, a task for the future.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why are babies born young?

Why are babies born young? This sounds like an odd question. People would say "of course babies are born young". However, this goes to the core of the question of human (or animal) development. Why is it that as time passes people develop initially through puberty and then for women through menopause and more generally getting diseases such as sarcopenia, osteoporosis, diabetes and cancer, but most of the time babies start showing no signs of this. Lots of research into this has happened over the years and now I think it is clear why this is. It raises some interesting questions. Biological youth is about how well a cell functions. Cells that are old in a biological sense don't work that well. One of the ways in which cells stop working is they fail to produce the full range of proteins. Generally the proteins that are produced from longer genes stop being produced. The reason for this relates to how the Genes work (the Genome). Because the genome is not gettin